AVG Partners Buys Loan on UBS Center in Stamford, Conn., for $54.2Mln

AVG Partners, which owns the UBS Center in Stamford, Conn., has purchased the defaulted CMBS loan against the 682,327-square-foot property. The Beverly Hills, Calif., investor paid $54.2 million for the loan, which was securitized through LB-UBS Commercial Mortgage Trust, 2004-C1. That compares to the empty property's most recent appraised value of $44.4 million.

Commercial Real Estate Direct Staff Report

AVG Partners, which owns the UBS Center in Stamford, Conn., has purchased the defaulted CMBS loan against the 682,327-square-foot property.

The Beverly Hills, Calif., investor, which specializes in properties that are triple-net leased to their tenants, paid $54.2 million for the loan, which was securitized through LB-UBS Commercial Mortgage Trust, 2004-C1.

The loan's sale was orchestrated by Mission Capital Advisors, which declined to comment on the transaction.

The loan originally had a balance of $229.7 million and was provided in 2004 to facilitate Eaton Vance Management's $243 million purchase of the property at 677 Washington Blvd. The property was subject to a ground lease with UBS. It's not known whether that lease has been restructured. At the time, the complex was fully occupied by UBS Investment Bank under a triple-net lease that was to run through this December.

The property was constructed in 1997 and expanded four years later. It includes a 13-story office building, a three-story building occupied by daycare and fitness centers and an eight-story building that houses a 103,000-sf trading floor - the world's largest, and big enough to hold 22 full-sized basketball courts. Eaton Vance in recent years sold the property to AVG.

After the financial crisis, UBS decided that it no longer needed as much space as it was occupying at the property. So it gradually started reducing its footprint, all the while paying rent on the space it leased. Two years ago, it signed a lease for 120,000 sf at the nearby...

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